Cadboro bay is my hood. I've been out there so many time this year and I just keep crawling back for more. Today I met Paula at the beach and marveled at the nice calm day that was laid out for us. No noisy halyards slapping the masts in the sailing association and no big trees moving. The wind was dead calm and the waves were gently lapping on the shoreline. Yesterday's swells were gone.

It was a chill day of paddling, and Paula and I were mostly just chatting about the man made rules around whales, whalewatchers and our postulations about their perception of the surrounding world. We crossed to the chains easily with only two tiny little eddy lines from Baynes. The chains had taken on their winter colors: dead broom plants, greyer rocks and big kelp beds all around. We were watched by really young seals who would duck down under us on our approach and glide right in behind us to keep a nice safe watching distance.

Our conversation was a little broken as we got near plumper passage. We started to drift with the flood tide and we changed course to head toward Jemmy Jones island. We were just floored by the scenery: the entire world was suddenly lit up by morning sun and all the colors of uplands with the bright spinnakers of yacht club boats gave me shivers. We thought we'd give 10 mile point a little looksee, so we started over to the light at cadboro point.

We could see some of the breaking waves at the edge of Baynes and found that the tide prediction was dead on. The rocks at cadboro point were being surrounded by a strange rainbow in the fog bank that rolled through just to the north of us. The area near the light was calmm as could be with asmall little current heading up through the rocks. We saw a couple of interesting birds out here in addition to the cormorants, seagulls and oystercatchers. These birds were about duck sized with pointed bills, brown heads, a spiky hairdo and orange legs - I think they may be mergansers.

We turned around at cadboro point and headed back down the shore waving to some of the boats on the way in. The nice little break from big southeast blows was just a treat and made it a great day to be out in the kayak.

This blog contains my logs for time out on the water and inside news on events that I'm following. Whether it's local paddling, traveling or yachting, you'll find the stories here! I live in Victoria, British Columbia. It's on the south coast of Vancouver Island in Canada. I paddle an 18'3", Orange decked Nimbus Telkwa as my regular kayak. See you on the blue stuff!